AfterElton.com - Interview With Sir Ian McKellen (page 3)

Interview With Sir Ian McKellen (page 3)
by Michael Jensen, September 27, 2006

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AE: At the Berlin Film Festival you said it's very difficult for a gay actor to be open about their sexuality. How is that communicated? Do agents tell actors they can't be out? Do directors refuse to hire openly gay actors? Or is it all unsaid and assumed and self-perpetuating?
IM: I think we can see this a little bit out of proportion. If I did say that I could've equally said it's not easy for anybody to come out. I don't think actors are that different from anybody else. It's still not easy for politicians to be out. It's now impossible for a priest or a head teacher or a scout master to be out. Actors just suffer from homophobia, and a lot of that will just be internalized. It certainly was in my case.

From puberty onwards I never hid my sexuality from anybody except for the press, who most gays don't have to bother with of course. Some close members of my family. My friends and employers and employees — they all knew, and I never felt it to be a disadvantage. I didn't think it was relevant. It was only when Armistead Maupin pointed out that none of us are an island, and that coming out is a wonderful release for the individual. But it also has a release beyond that on one's friends and acquaintances and eventually society as a whole. That's how the movement goes forward.

Are there any specific obstacles which disadvantage gay actors as opposed to gay teachers or gay firemen? I'm not sure that there are. There has been many an actor picking up the Tony in New York who thanked their same-gender partner from the stage. Yet on the other side of the continent in Hollywood, it's not thought to be appropriate to come out. Now, who thinks it's not appropriate is the question you're really asking. It might well be the individual to a certain extent.

Yes, my agent in London counseled me against coming out when I did. I'm sure that still happens in Hollywood. When I said to George somebody who used to a write a column in the Hollywood Reporter — or was it Daily Variety? — anyway, he was an older gay man. I said to him: "How long is it going to be before a young gay actor in the first flush of his success announces he's gay and overnight becomes the most famous actor in the world and goes on to have a brilliant career?" He said, "I hope never." That was a man in the press who was supposed to be telling the truth about the world spending his life as many other gossip columnists who were gay did: trying to protect himself as well as the status quo.

Yes, I'm sure the advice to young actors is 'Don't come out, [or] you'll never be a young film star playing romantic roles.' How many actors are like that at any one time? A half-dozen? It's not the greatest imposition in the world to say you cannot be a Hollywood romantic lead in his 20s if it's known you are gay. Get another job. Became a character actor like me. Become a director. Become a screenwriter. Become an agent. A designer. Become a producer. There are plenty of openly gay people in all of those jobs. What's so enduring about being the next Brad Pitt? There are so few of them at one time. It's almost impossible to become a romantic lead in your 20s. Don't think it's just because you are gay that you're not going to make it. [But] it will happen sooner or later.

If people want to take comfort they should look at my career, which only took off after I came out. And I go and play heterosexual parts, and I love to. Heterosexuality is a very interesting phenomenon. I play them nonstop, all the time. I play very few gay parts. Is Magneto gay? Is Gandalf? Is Teabing? Is [it] like I have scenes where I have to shove my tongue down actresses' throats? Well, no. But the first part I played after coming out was John Profumo, the English politician, which is little remembered except for being a raving heterosexual. I had to take advice on how to simulate f***ing Joanne Whalley-Kilmer under a silk sheet, but nobody said I wasn't convincing in that part.

I really regret that Hollywood isn't more aware of the real world. If you think of West Hollywood and the number of gay people who live there: the gay policemen who patrol the streets. The wonderful gay and lesbian youth center. A model of what society could and should be like. Yet living cheek by jowl with — that there should be local industry that doesn't seem to realize how old-fashioned it is.

I've never been welcomed with anything but open arms in Hollywood. When I held hands with my boyfriend at the Oscars, nobody seemed to turn a hair. I think I had in my pocket at the time my Oscar acceptance speech saying I was proud though a little bit disappointed to be the first openly gay actor who'd ever won an Oscar. I didn't get to make that speech because it was the year Hollywood discovered there were black people in the world. You've got to laugh, really. The poor actor who feels he is never going to be a leading romantic actor in his youth, go do it somewhere else. Go do it on Broadway.

AE: Did you follow the “Is Superman gay?” debate? One of our AfterElton.com writers speculated it was a controversy ginned up by the studio for publicity.
IM: What? A gay character in a Bryan Singer movie? [Laughs.] No, I didn't. What was the point?

AE: There's a lot of controversy over what actually started it. The Advocate put Superman on the cover with the headline "How Gay Is Superman?" I was curious if you were aware of it and what you thought.
IM: Bryan Singer and Mike Dougherty and [Dan] Harris are all openly gay, and it wouldn't surprise me if that approach to Superman might have been appealing to them, but I think they rather got all that off their chest when they wrote the second X-Men movie when there was quite clearly a scene in which the young mutant comes out to his parents. His mother says to him, "Have you always known you were a mutant?" It was perfectly obvious what they were referring to there. When Bryan Singer asked me to play Magneto, he tempted me by saying mutants are in part gay, just as they are black or Jews or any other group that gets the finger pointed at them. It sounds to me unlikely they would repeat themselves with Superman.

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